- In the presence of what Barry Schwabsky recently dubbed “retromodernism” in The Nation how can we begin to reshape the critical dialogue concerning the multifaceted discipline of painting without simply mirroring the modernist function of painting practice or arriving at another reified or meaningless definition? While definitions of painting may not be able to freely detach from the physical object or processes the painter engages in, any teleological or ontological examination of painting within contemporary art simply sidesteps the critical examination of what painting is capable of speaking of and to. How can we reinvigorate the critical examination of painting without relying on the aforementioned approaches or rehashing modernist-era endgames, which inevitably devolve into a debate about medium specificity, leading to a fundamentalist definition and defense of painting’s value?
- Is the nature of our current landscape of images, which is exponentially growing due to the abundance of consumer imaging products and platforms, becoming flat? In other words is it no longer possible or meaningful to distinguish between the amateur or untrained image-maker and the presumably more refined and considered eye of the artist? Does this lessen or strengthen the concept of cultural production?